


sleep soundly while he's gone

by junesangie



Category: NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Breakfast, Fear, Gen, Hysteria, Imagery, Investigations, M/M, Minor Lee Taeyong/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten, Missing Persons, Panic, Someone is Missing, Unsettling, Vomiting, Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas-centric, alternate universe - there's only six members, i’ve been working on this for so long it’s already 2021, mentions of vomit, taemin is a jerk for a hot second, taeyong’s hair color wasn’t consistent so i FIXED that, yeah people are gonna get sick a lot in this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junesangie/pseuds/junesangie
Summary: yukhei feels his protest burbling, roiling and sloshing, nearly spilling over the rim as the others discuss what to do with his hysteria.it’s shameful that he almost agrees. especially when not one of them knows what they’ve lost.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong & Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Lee Taeyong/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten, Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas & Byun Baekhyun, Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas & Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul, Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas & Mark Lee
Comments: 16
Kudos: 34





	1. part i: awaken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lighte is back everyone!! here's a product of one day's minimal few paragraphs, and one night of excessive slowed-down k-pop to aid my sudden writing fix. hope it's good!

The first thing Yukhei notices is that the sun is a little too bright. A touch more white this time around, less golden rays and more piercing spotlights. But the sky is blue, and he’s rubbing sand from his eyes, and it seems like the morning is greeting him still. He’s okay. A little sore from yesterday’s practice, but that can be fixed by breakfast and maybe a swim for their day off.

He pulls the covers back, reaching forward as vertebrae pop and crack, settling into a proper position for a vaguely comfortable day. The covers are soaking in the light, and it rests around his bleach-bright hair like a crown woven of Helios’ own flowers from the garden of eternal day. It’s easy to get caught in the way his long fingers seem to capture shadow and its opposite so well, but he knows that the bed must be made, and the hyungs shouldn’t be woken unless it’s after ten. 

A laugh rings around the walls of his secluded room. Ten. They’ve known each other for three and a half years, but it still makes him smile every time the word is mentioned as a number instead of a name.

It’s quiet today, he notices. Not a single member is awake or even moving around to his knowledge, though it’s likely with how quiet Taeyong is, he’s already up and making himself breakfast. He pushes both feet into his slippers, standing still to gain his balance, and pushes open the door to make his way to the kitchen.

Not only is Taeyong there, but so is Ten, practically clinging to him like a koala as the oldest present flips pancakes, an occasional spitting of oil catching both off-guard. His WayV bandmate is still half asleep, he realizes, but that doesn’t explain his choice to lean on Taeyong instead of curling up on the couch like he usually does. At least, that’s what he prefers in their dorm. But this isn’t like before—well, he’s not entirely sure of that yet—and if these two have been close since before he even joined this company, let alone this unit, then it’s nothing that concerns him in the slightest.

Nobody speaks. It’s like the entire house is on mute, remote lost between imagined cushions even he can’t conjure with his rampant imagination—one that has rounded into reprimands and scolding more often than not. People peg him as simply dreamy, in both senses of the word, but those close to him know better. Cameras don’t capture half as well the captivation he regains in his mind. Ten always thought it was a shame, voiced it openly, saying that he should find an outlet such as his own practiced skills in art and dance. Yukhei isn’t sure yet what he wants, aside from the satisfaction of making the fans happy. Maybe it’s his mind telling him there’s no need for extracurriculars. It still gives him a headache to think about, and he settles down into a seat at the table upon Taeyong’s offhand request.

There’s more footsteps at the doorway, and he half-expects Mark to come shuffling in, complaining about how Kai-hyung woke him up earlier than any normal guy should be shaken to his senses. It’s only Taemin, though. Fingers slide across the countertop, their sunbaenim’s sleepy grin like a cat that’s been lying in the afternoon shine for half an hour too long. It’s almost cute, if he dared to say such a thing to his face, which of course he won’t. Still, no one says a word. The smile disappears just as inexplicably, like he blinks and it’s just…not there.

He could’ve sworn a glow was surrounding the room a moment ago. Now it feels even colder than when he arrived.

With breakfast ready, Ten waves his hand for the two outliers to line up. Jongin’s entered at this rate, starting up the coffee, only acknowledging them all with a quiet greeting and a simple nod. Everything feels so monotonous, but by the time their leader is pouring syrup over his pancakes, he can barely stand how stifling the air has become. Stiff, unmoving, like everyone has sworn a pact of silence over someone’s dead body and let the blood from their palms run thin, dripping straight into a shallow grave.

It’s not the caffeine; he’s barely let the liquid burn his tongue, let alone tasted it with any intent. His heart still pounds, relentless, and it feels like it shouldn’t be at all. Despite Ten’s awkward glance toward his shaking right hand, then to his face, and away in the span of a second, he knows something is wrong _aside_ from him. 

Mark isn’t there. Mark isn’t there, and the worst sinking feeling is beginning to rot in his chest, the cavity where his lungs should be filling with mossy water intent on drowning him before the words escape his mouth. He nearly chokes on the first bite of his breakfast. The bready texture gives it the opportunity to stick in his throat, cutting off his airflow from unfettered panic before it slides down again, gag reflex activated but expression never changing from self-conscious fear.

Yukhei shoves himself to standing, and suddenly everyone’s forks have stopped. Taeyong’s mug is at his mouth when it happens, but this, too, like Taemin’s curved lips, somehow just _isn’t_.

“Where’s Mark?” he asks, the tremble wracking his words evident. Yet the question is clear—more than the blank stares everyone is giving him. It’s as if they can’t hear, and if they do, they’re tuning him out. Like a frequency unnecessary to this walkie-talkie game, so they simply switch the channel. 

He tries again, gaining some control in the aftermath of his outburst. “Where is he?” This time it’s slower, not to belittle their intelligence, but to entrust that everyone can hear. “Why isn’t Mark with us?”

They blink, Baekhyun and Jongin practically in sync. No one answers. The latter just gives him a pitying look, as if he’s a child pleading to know when he can see his grandparent, unknowing that only hours before they—

No. No, no, _no_ . It’s not possible, this can’t be happening, _it isn’t possible._ The murky fluid is leaking into his guts now, churning them with lichen and pond grass and making his stomach clench from every side. He might vomit if he tries to run, or if he sits back down, but he can’t stay here. Not with those empty, calculating eyes, ones that are telling him wordlessly he’s insane, delusional even, because Mark just wanted to sleep in, because everything is totally fine. It isn’t fine. He doesn’t try to wonder how he knows. He just does, and that’s enough for his breath to burst from the surface of that marsh within his chest, breaking forth into the air not even perfumed with birdsong, across the chasm that separates this nightmare from what he knows is real.

Their leader sighs, shaking his head with disdain, as if Yukhei and his hysteria is nothing more than a nuisance that disturbs their muted, incomplete existence. “Lucas,” he says, and it’s as if he speaks to someone he doesn’t even know. “What are you talking about?”

Taemin murmurs something to Ten; the younger glares at him while a stifled laugh is swallowed by another gulp of coffee. How they can stomach any of the food laid before them, he couldn’t say. It’s tasteless, or maybe he just can’t taste it because he isn’t under the same hypnosis as everybody else.

“Mark…” he tries and fails to whisper, voice faltering, slipping into the endless crevice becoming wider by the second. “What about _Mark—?_ ”

Taeyong looks sick now, like he might bring up his own methodical bites if someone says that name again. Blue hair sticks to his temples, the sight of sweat only a hint at what lies beneath the surface. Everything is blocky and sharp, too new for anyone to feel at home. Edges lie at every corner, but no matter how hard you try, they always catch on your clothing, on your skin, ripping through you like the claws of an unseen beast as blood and bone turn to gossamer in its grasp. 

The ground is falling away. Yukhei feels it, and he wishes that were the reason his pulse is spiking now, breaths quick to fill and empty beneath still, tenebrous waters he can’t seem to find the end of.

He is choking, on the air around him and the absence of it, too. “Lucas,” someone says again, toneless, unaware of just how wrong they’re going to be.

_“Who is Mark?”_


	2. part ii: configure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT’S BEEN THREE WHOLE MONTHS PLEASE FORGIVE ME I JUST FINISHED THE SECOND CHAPTER

Yukhei can’t breathe. He isn’t sure where the ground is, if such an earthen savior can be trusted while everybody save one stares him down like a guilty child found scribbling on the walls. There isn’t a single thing to do but play it off, but his hysteria needs a moment, the refutable promise of calm washing over like the coffee Jongin sips while shade-matching irises flick away with a note of slight disinterest. Their leader isn’t amused, clearly, and Taemin—the man all of them looked up to as trainees, as newly-rising idols, as the stars they are today—still wears ridicule like a brand name design as pearls strung from cheek to cheek. The canvas of Ten’s face is blanking, erasing previous work, rolling over with eggshell house paint that drips a cold sweat over both their brows, neither furrowed for risk of comment on their complexions.

“Lucas…” Taeyong’s whisper is scrubbed raw, dead skin peeling back in slivers to unveil the roiling and squirming of intestines that also mirrors his. He hasn’t raised the fork to his mouth again, picking around the pancakes he’s prepared, irregular-cut slices drinking in the syrup unlike his paling form. “Just sit.” His eyes, ones that belong deep-set in the head of a porcelain doll that children adore and adults vaguely fear, are glistening and yet dull at once, afraid that someone will see how near to losing precious wakefulness he really is. Somehow, Yukhei finds his way to steadiness, albeit the suspicion encircling it becomes misty, unfocused just as everybody’s motions he can’t seem to tack down for the life of him. Taeyong is right; if he’s silent, they won’t worry, won’t delve into their egos to criticize his excitable state, aren’t able to believe such a paranoid young man is one of seven handpicked by Sooman himself.

He wonders, only for a brief and terse span he cannot revel in while settling back in place, if any of them wrecked the peace, planned an elaborate scheme in the attempt to focus his attention towards a serious topic. Taemin, while read first as genius then second as mischievous, appears most gleamingly-obvious, least puzzled even while flung amongst less experienced artists with no requirements of restraint. Perhaps he’s organized this, but he still hasn’t the stomach to pretend an entire _person_ is missing—no, gut-wrenchingly worse. Gone. As if his existence was the prologue for this final draft and the character was deemed dull by editors, so he’s been scrapped and remains unremembered aside from the distance between failed originality and success. 

Not Taemin. He feels layers beneath the surface, coated in sand and buried in what’s several times been read as guilt for helpless mourning. Not after what happened those years prior, he couldn’t possibly agree to such a horrid prank. He begins a round of the table in quiet evaluation, but ceases, a trembling newborn bird whose wings have yet to sprout feathers, much less merge and plume for flight. Ten’s downing his tea, likely scalding his throat, swallowing oxygen, burns soothed with a balm of ignorance clearly applied to the internal workings by each of them but himself.

This isn’t enough. Mark’s starry, watermelon-seed eyes aren’t gazing in anticipation toward any of his hyungs. His berry nebula of thick locks isn’t shocking between cornsilk and mocha, mussed from sleep and the brief wakefulness he gains before enhancing it between sips of caffeine. He could have sworn this image wasn’t false, isn’t just a bleached-out memory of his dreams. How could he have formulated someone he’s never spoken to, never known, when the knowledge is so vivid among the rest of them?

“I’ll be at the studio.” A weak excuse, much less a promising disguise, but masquerading is the least of his worries when no one recollects a single scene of Mark’s existence among their group. Jongin doesn’t waste much time in judgement, though both his reaction and Taemin’s become synced as plucked brows rise. It flickers, all instability of his sightline offering whiplash as one of several veritable solutions, and he just about craves insanity more closely than this before standing, breakfast mostly untouched save the small bite from one doughy pancake. Ten’s spring-wound jaw exercises visible restraint, sipping ice water to ease magma bubbling along his esophagus. 

Not one concern chases after him while rounding the gathering, steps deer-like to his weight, stable while viewed by mannequins with features carved in resemblance to men he so admires. Wafting ambrosia has been spinning cotton through a needle’s eye, and all he’s grasped that emerges is chaos glossed prettily by the promise of creative freedom and pay, the latter of a pair that should have been recognized as secondary to all.

“He’s never acted like this,” Ten murmurs, grinding his meal into what must be a flavorful blandness while oozing bitterness through worry. Yukhei wastes the precious gemstone of a crusade to flatten his spine against the outside wall, a camouflaged moth fluttering about in sunlight to eavesdrop on the humans, all too stupid to realize the tsunami growing when a crucial being to their ecosystem is erased. “Did something happen last night?”

“I was with him practically the whole time.” 

“Lucas just does that sometimes, doesn’t he?”

“ _Hyung._ ”

“Don’t _hyung_ me, Nini, everyone knows that about him. He’s a little off, so what? I’ll bet you nothing will be wrong by tomorrow, maybe even dinner.”

“The two of you won’t fix anything if…”

As a gusting breeze claws and slashes driftwood-bonfire smoke, departing shoves both curtains away, floodgate hammered by ferocity while brimming ponds shimmer in the early autumn sting.

~

He’s unsure of how to lie, the receiving end shocked by lightning, charred too indefinitely to remember the steps to a lifelong dance. Everyone but him is whirling, and still it’s too quick, too much, he doesn’t learn the mannerisms fast enough to settle because no part of him can. What it means to retain stillness, Yukhei cannot delve so far within this tangled, muddied filth they call order. There’s no water, quenching his feeling of insecurity impossible. Why does nobody try harder, search with lamplight and memories until he’s brought home?

Why does no one remember _Mark_?

A snail shell to polished flooring, he tilts back his head against the invisible reflection, parallel mirrors vanishing as thick lashes settle, feathers roosting for a brief second before the violent escape. Something pounds through his marrow, bronchioles of twin tissue-paper lungs. “Where are you?” Syrup dripping carelessly from the sunrise’s forgone meal, matting hair and slicking skin by nature’s ordered preface to pain. He slams a palm against his skull, a stuttered half rest while the second mimics with difficulty, the urge to claw past keratin strands and outer muscle expanding until it bursts, needling reminders of helplessness stuck in the balloons of his uneven breath.

Both legs have carried him too far in amicable fashion to be trusted, yet he can dismiss reliability for strength as he crosses polished floors, bursts through a wavering entryway, weaves between bodies, blessedly unrecognized without the surrounding members if they truly are that still. In between one of two homes, the practice studio, a limbo line of fishing wire impaling him, the path guides him insensitively as Taemin would if he’d noticed stumbling every now and then. Weren’t they close before? Mark’s absence—his _disappearance_ —tweaks even significance toward swapped personalities, and the knowledge only makes his stomach clench around emptiness as he walks into a building that lists smoothies as a lunch option, too aware of just how hungry he’s been since waking.

_They’re playing a trick on you,_ he concludes, trying to rationalize the ridiculousness of his situation. _They’re just joking, he’s probably hiding somewhere at home without you knowing._ And some sort of tide surrounds his body, so that before he knows it, lunch is sitting in front of him and the wallet in his pocket has become heavier with the thought of only one meal to pay for instead of seven.

Seven. There should be one more, and yet the number six—while perfectly even, neutral, unbridled by oddity—hangs a prickling rope around the neck he’s been so desperate to protect for what feels like much too long already.

A bell above the door chimes, signifying another customer to add into such a throng at midday, but he’s invested in stifling the growl of his stomach before anything else. The drink is ocean water, at least to him, but he sucks it through the straw diligently, as if eating a dish one of the hyungs haven’t managed to prepare quite right. A pair of big, shining eyes unblinkingly observe Yukhei when he finally pulls his gaze from the tabletop, and he nearly topples the chair he’s in when the pulse of his heart spikes three miles into the air. 

“Taeyong-hyung…?”

“Keep your voice down. _Please._ ” A mask over the lower half of his sharp-angled features doesn’t conceal red-rimmed lashes that flit in time with dark irises, a black-marble camera stuck to the flooring instead of whitewashed ceilings. If he knew any better, the younger would think paranoia, but that seems impossible. Taeyong found no interest in his panic during the hours of morning—what force hooked its glassy claws between his shoulder blades and left him bleeding doubt on his way here?

Half-drunk smoothie no longer a priority, Yukhei hurriedly tugs his own mask over the bone-carven bridge of his nose, waving down a waiter as politely as possible. “Can I get the mango smoothie and a _bungeoppang_ for my friend?” Said friend looks terrified until the employee departs, noticeable tension unwinding only from his torso and never once from his expression. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, as if the common courtesy is unexpected. They all recall each other’s orders in seconds at this rate, from interviews or random conversation, don’t they? Or is this yet another detail dissipated in the elaborate trick everyone pretends to believe?

A shrug, followed by outstretched fingers that beckon Taeyong’s to venture into their grasp. “I didn’t see you eat much at breakfast. Are you okay?” Typically answered by himself and not his first group’s leader, the inquiry feels familiar but all too personal as it shoves past teeth he’ll lie through the moment he returns. “I thought pancakes were your favorite.”

“They are.” His fingers were always slight, yet they reach unsteady under the guise of an excuse involving autumnal chill. He tears away from such a view and chooses to suffer the doe-in-headlights stare in lieu of digging this trench any steeper. “I got sick after you left,” he admits, and the brush of retreat fills his stomach to swelling, bursting with disgust at his unimpeachable worry now multiplying the situation’s worst aspect. “The milk must have gone bad…Taemin-hyung’s been in his room since I left to look for you. I don’t know why I didn’t check the date, that was so stupid of me, I’m really sorry—”

“Hey.” Interrupting isn’t unheard of, but disrespect is frowned upon either way. Taeyong’s muscles wind around spools again, threads plucked taut, so vulnerable that Yukhei could reach above prism-light locks and snatch at them with intangible hands too real for the ethereal being such cords weave into. “It wasn’t the pancakes.”

The waiter’s return sparks static between them; the string slithers back into his spine as food is presented, a second and third concoction to the collection growing upon the café table. “Thank you,” is a chorus of endless echoes that begin tumbling within Yukhei’s skull, icy boulders rattling for nothing but noise to make his temples ache. He needs to understand. Taeyong’s silence is the scaled-up key to a palace of firelit corridors, and each door must be swung forth if he wants the truth to be unveiled.

White noise drifts with rotting leaves outside, and for the second time, his intestines tie sailor knots within his torso. “Hyung, I need you to be honest with me,” and thus far, his avoidance has hushed many liar’s debts. “You know something’s wrong, don’t you? That everyone’s been acting weird since we woke up?” 

It’s a favor to Taeyong, how the cotton shields his face, for if removed his jaw surely would have unhinged and been splintered to shards on a floor covered in damp shoeprints. “I _told_ you, _keep your voice down,_ ” the young man pleads, forearms tensing as they lie atop their only physical divide. “They can’t know we’re here. Under _any_ condition, they _cannot_ know where we are if we leave the dorm, okay?”

And suddenly, for a second that spans minutes, hours further than a setting they’ve now claimed—Yukhei knows that skimming off the surface doesn’t and never will equate to gulping down milk from the fruits of forbidden paradise.

“What the hell is going on.” It emerges a demand, but he’s long past the caution tape of reason, toting a shovel that might weigh just a touch more each step he takes into the scene. Center stage, he reminds himself, though anxiety for the spotlight isn’t so similar now. “I know you don’t wanna tell me, okay? I understand. But no one except you can help me figure out what’s happening.” At this, branches surge forth in a growth spurt of excess trimmings from the edges of the planet only two can inhabit, and Taeyong looks so fragile Yukhei fears his blunt reaction has transformed his thoughts into those of prey instead of predator. “I’m only asking one more time: Where is Mark?”

Uncomfortable is such a grand understatement, but it only takes him moments to burble out a nearly-unintelligible “I don’t know,” before sinking further into his thoughts. But he snares the younger off-guard at his next words, which are hardly meant for his ears:

“He disappeared. I know he did, Yukhei, I—” He has to mute the quest of his words, snatching the pastry from where it sits in unassuming wax paper, pushing down material darkness to tear off a piece with once-chattering teeth. Chew, swallow, nearly choke, hold it down. It’s textbook, he understands the method every star has learned since trainee days, which is that of rejecting food at intervals they shouldn’t be consuming it. “Mark was with me last night. We were just getting ready for bed, and I left for the other room to get the lotion, and then his toothbrush sounded off, so I went to go check and—” For the second time, he can’t help but ooze sorrow for his leader; he’s likely terrified, Mark’s vanishing an enormous weight upon his mind that’s unimaginable to any of the rest. “I-I don’t know what happened,” Taeyong finishes, doughy fish brought to his lips again, mask tugged up as he fights the expulsion of anything edible to sustain himself. “I’m so sorry I don’t know more…”

“Don’t apologize, hyung.” Waving down the waiter again, eyeing warily the occasional shake of the other’s shoulders, Yukhei wastes no time in receiving the bill and signing it off before he finally stands. It’s been at least forty minutes, if not more—they can’t linger unless the risk of exposure is still a part of their plans. “We can go back now, right? Stay in your room and figure out what to do?”

Fiercely sure of his choice, anxiety creeping up his spine with mossy limbs that cling with sticky residue, Taeyong grasps Yukhei’s hand, emboldened enough for weaving tinted fibers through imperfect gaps between. Fashioned to be held, lonely independence would be his downfall. But leading with even one by his side, the world seems a conquerable place.

A search has begun, and still the compass spins so wildly along its path. Perhaps the setting dawn has muddled even fields unnecessary to their journey; perhaps a butterfly’s breadth of moments is even less than they know.

~

Tempted more than ever to quit this charade, to ask the others for confessions of a dirty prank, Yukhei settles beside sheets that are suddenly a prison for his wild thoughts. He’s caged—they both are, and it’s evident that the variance is driving Taeyong up every available wall.

Their camp is a fortress for now, fashioned with thick slabs of quartzite, glittering from a rainstorm that’s been battering them for a generous two hours at this rate. On either end, they believe it’s a punishment for once overthinking and finally comprehending so late, and it’s only silence as the room swells larger, somehow too big for them as it disregards that a lone body rests to recharge inside every night.

“I’m so sorry, Yukhei,” is the genuine, devastated whisper to startle him from spiraling thoughts. They were both lucky enough to return unscathed, and yet…

And yet _what_? Nobody is dialing authorities, reporting to their manager an obvious case of kidnapping or worse. Swearing on their lives creates an image of insanity, and it’s the single most conspicuous motive for those who conveniently recall a boy who was suddenly siphoned from Earth just fourteen hours ago, if that even thumbtacks the correct disappearance.

Without a preamble or hesitation, fingers interlock once more, each other’s anchor in the roiling sea they’re watching flood everything they knew. If they convince any stray thoughts enough, it almost becomes a horrifying dream; one they’ll wake from, scrambling for purchase on oil-slick flooring only to find a peaceful slumber the only grasp Mark has yet to wake from.

“It’s okay, hyung.” Solid arms bundle Taeyong into a state of reversion, childlike though he attempts to grapple wires for connecting the unsolved halves. He’s _scared_ , and Yukhei doesn’t think anything terrifies him more than the unfettered fear, because his leader is always the one to defy hopeless nature and not embrace it.

Because if Taeyong is quivering beside him, fending off worst-case scenarios that likely stole Mark from them all—then whose strength will he depend on with no one else by their side?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s gonna be like this for a little longer 😅 but how was it? any ideas on what could have taken mark? more importantly—what do you think should/will happen next?


	3. part iii: manifest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> are y’all ready?? because i wasn’t. have fun with this chapter 😅
> 
> warning: even more mentions of panic and being sick.

“I have an idea.”

Taeyong’s been hesitant about sleep, afraid of Yukhei or the rest leaving, but he’s floating now between dreams and harsh reality, trying to keep both eyes open so he can listen. Rain still spatters the windows, but neither of them know cold other than that of emptiness. It’s fizzing out now, carbonation and panic mixing into a cocktail they can barely swallow, October so nearly over yet further than it should be.

Blankets rustle, a collapsed tent billowing away to reveal messy hair and a dim gaze. “What idea…?” he mumbles, scratching sand from both eyes and just about face planting into the carpet getting over to his younger member. “There is no idea. There’s nothing we can do right now that won’t make them all…you know.” He gestures vaguely about the room, and it’s as if sleep only enhanced his assurances because he’s even less of a believer than Yukhei now. 

Tripping over the word, he maneuvers with a ballerina’s grace to replace it. After all, synonyms are simplified terms that have been in constant use since this morning, no? “I have a _plan,_ ” he tries now, alternating between a right and the difficulty pressing toward nightfall. Overcast skies create the atmosphere of loneliness, even as Yukhei presses inward, clutching fabric stuffed with material of a manufactured cloud so that his nerves are a projection, the same as Taeyong’s. “It’s not a lot, but I have something.”

If he knew better, he might anticipate ridicule for believing after what’s been going on. But in all fairness, just over ten hours simply dampens his persistence—it hasn’t fully soaked through yet. “For what,” the older deadpans now, upright and tugging at the sheets with fingers filmed over by delicate, invisible frost. “We can’t _do_ anything. Mark, he—there isn’t…” And he’s gone again, the lazy puppeteers commandeering his motion falling fast asleep once more as he trembles, jerks his head violently both ways, somehow still managing to listen. “What is there to do?”

“There’s a lot we can do.” Distance becomes irrelevant; he’s got both large hands curled around ones that aren’t so small, yet even spindly fingers come across like spun sugar. One shuddering breath, and the panes burst into splinters. “But we have to get dinner first.” From beside him emerges a warm phone, buzzing again with the seventh message from Ten.

He’s an odd character, Lee Taeyong. An idol with the semblance of brazen confidence onstage, his wavelength not uncommon for performers but still so rare, he possesses the ability to lift spirits like buttery rays of sun. That, and a smile to rival heartrending injury is creeping over his lips, signature glow fizzling back to life. “Chitta,” he whispers, cradling the device as if it’s their final connection to reality. In a way, these four truly are, save all ignorance that crackles like electricity before the storm rampaging outside. 

It’s quiet, rain pummeling glass, pulses dotted in temperamental time, before mismatched bodies pull both feet beneath them. A gentle nudge, one too near the jagged edge. Heading back to the empty room is a precarious option; it doesn’t require a bout of hard reason to understand.

“Let’s go.”

~

Dinner, like breakfast, is a peculiar affair. The duo of rapper and vocalist from earlier still appears joined at the hip, though one is working free of a false mold, detached and bleeding from the wound he’s failed at tending to since dark morning broke.

Though Taemin’s visage has settled, the inner cognition remains a mystery. His irritation might linger from earlier. Yukhei decides to ignore his whispered conversation within a scuffed bubble, Kai hesitantly tilting each bone in a most awkward direction to listen with care. It’s no secret that in such a world, Taemin dislikes the compassion for false reality. Perhaps he’s more wounded than anything; not one can erase those months of sorrow from their minds.

“This is great, hyung,” Ten mumbles, unintelligible aside from the familiar grouping of sound gathering about his lips. A gorgeous distraction, and it’s not as if jealousy plays a starring role in this performance, but he certainly prays that candy sweetness will somehow misinterpret their attempts tonight, giving Taeyong the elongated rest he craves. Always the one to accept a generous compliment, their leader interrupts right on time. He’s overthinking once more, tiptoeing shakily through an empty house that screeches and moans, every door mimicking his muted terror instead of revealing the truth.

“Glad you like it.” A classic, contrasting beam tugs at the veil before he, too, returns to eating. Nobody comments on unsavory weather, though it must dampen both the concrete and most all their moods. Though rain speckles all clothing like robin eggs, no commentary proceeds the realization, and he remains silent for fear of upsetting this falsely-crafted peace.

The clock reads later than preferable, though it’s been only half an hour of suffering among silent dinner guests who cannot recall the missing piece. It’s glueing back a shattered vase and the largest shard, instead of accepting conformity, refuses and simultaneously embeds itself through his chest. Impaled by his own reasoning. The fork in his grasp melts into bullets loaded by twin guns trained upon him. Will his heart rate count the quickened shots? Is that a desperate last resort before he lies dead, or worse—vanished?

Too much, all of it, piling into an enormous tower he knows will collapse at a single breath. “Thanks for dinner, hyung,” he forces out, though it’s still possible his leader truly is a two-dimensioned man of paper and watercolor. Even the natural parchment complexion has become an alabaster pallor he pretends to ignore. 

And because this uncanny bond has fastened further now, a twining thread barely stalling the urge to move forward, Taeyong follows, picking up his plate and trailing Yukhei to the sink. Not alone, yet out of earshot, and it’s more a plot device than real concern that anyone might overhear. 

“Time?” he inquires, and while his friend fumbles to maintain a grip on his phone, the sponge grows swollen with scalding water in his hand.

Someone laughs back in the dining room, the sound hollowed to preoccupied ears. Staying here much longer would be imprisoning both of them, and he can’t decipher what fear is manifesting between breaths, so he keeps silent until the raw declaration needles into the atmosphere. “Six-forty,” he hears. The scrubbing grows more frantic as another minute ticks by. This proximity is driving him up the walls, they have to leave, departure imminent anyhow but hopefully sooner rather than later.

His leader’s muttering from the hushed, tension-riddled conversation at lunch slinks in with panther’s feet, and suddenly both lungs have seized, cardiac arrest to the bronchioles instead of his heart. It’s filling once more, the swampy river from before, spilling from between his ribs like some grotesque fountain feature, carved with intentions of beauty. This is not brilliant, nor artistic, nor thoughtful or relieving. Panic is pumping the Heimlich maneuver into him, and the results won’t be deathly until his crown snaps against the sink.

_Under any condition, they cannot know where we are if we leave the dorm._

“Hyung,” he forces from parched lips. A warning later than possible, for he looks deathly as the others have become. Taeyong curls round his wrist, stuck firmly to one elbow, regrettably sidling beside him as the nausea—the unrelenting _wrongness_ —passes with the sincerity of a speeding train. A blink that tangles dark lashes, fastened like coat buttons, unravels, and this only prepares him for the grounding scent and sensation of his room.

At home, he would be less unresponsive and more high-maintenance as steady hands wipe down his wrists, then dab a sheen of false perspiration at his temples. He doesn’t comment as petals graze his hairline, for he’s grown used to the affection; a chiming tone still vibrates through him. The wavelength is bitter tonight, somehow knit in a fashion they both recall.

Yukhei is quick to resurface the mindset of before. Accommodating as he may be, this sort of doled kindness brings a remarkable variable to the web. One he refuses to acknowledge until the plan is complete.

“How much time do we have?” he asks, voice scrubbed raw as an easier noise soothes him once again. The reply is stilted, almost as if prepared and recited, though he knows it isn’t true. Even in the minimal span of time, he’s grown into his role as a supposed protector, and that frightens him even more than the answer.

“Enough,” is meant as a double-sided coin. He relents, and diverts his focus to driving rain instead of the rapid pulse clogging his throat.

With a space of half a breath between them, he wastes the sole moment of eye contact on concentrated hues. They never reciprocate the missed opportunity.

Feathered knuckles graze, then grasp, bones tight against the flow as one hand pauses the glide of another. “I’m okay,” he assures, while simultaneously rewinding the entire day, minute by second, slowed and sped inside a rape recorder shoved someplace inside his mind. And while such lies draw apart most of the time, he finds an odd compromise as they settle onto their stomachs together, pillows adjusted for sore elbows as they switch on a tablet from the bedside table.

He counts the sections as they pass. Three half-hours trickle by, storm still unrelenting, as they rebuke outer interference with their willful prayers of ignorance. Settled now in his bed, meant for a singular body, he finds them both drifting unsteadily to sleep. Face slumping dangerously near puffy locks, each strand scented by signature perfume, he can’t help but nestle his chin beside one pierced ear, comfort throbbing like a hidden vice throughout every inch of marrow. 

Taeyong slumbers now, most often tranquil with an addition of surmised restless movement. Leader dozing comfortably against his chest, the fortress held steady by later objectives, Yukhei finds himself in biting cold, draping every sheet over his friend in an attempt for normalcy.

His heart aches somewhere in that endless aperture behind every rib. _Not for long,_ he’s reminded by the always-optimistic voice cheering on this plan.

It’s right. He doesn’t have very long at all.

~

With hardly any sleep beneath his belt, he’s rubbing granules of sand from his vision, knowing that a measly three hours isn’t enough for the strength he’s going to require. The clock already reads eleven minutes from tomorrow morning. He can’t waste any time, or he’ll run the risk of yet another dying hope both have clung to for the whole day. Disappointing Taeyong would crush him.

It’s obvious the opportunity is wide, but so is their chance of failure. Ignoring the whisper, a nagging sound from snarled teeth, hands find clenched limbs buried by woven cotton, shaking carefully lest a glass figurine has replaced his fearless leader. “Hyung.” Tearing back paper of an unwilling gift, he finds the other only half his original size, huddled the same as a featherless newborn bird beneath the nest of his final blanket. 

“ _No,_ ” is the impertinent, groggy answer. The outside is lit only by clouds a few shades lighter than an endless sky, ceiling of storm clouds relentless in flooding out every living being in this corner of the city. It may have slowed to a drizzle as they slept, he hypothesizes, then doubts it happening in the first place. They’ll have no such luck. Bad news has tailed like a bride’s train since the sun rolled back thick leaves to send forth dawn.

There’s no sense in reversing it. Not with him gone.

He tries again, noticing the shift from four to five on the digital clock already, numbers foretelling the danger in shaving so close to the second. “You have to get up. _Please,_ hyung, I—” What’s the excuse? A sleep-muddled brain is slow, but typically not so lethargic, right? “We’re gonna get him back. I _told_ you, I have a plan…”

And at this—only because the world’s humor is crudely-fashioned and not in any way lharmless—bleary eyes shoot open before he tumbles to the floor, tangled in sheets reminiscent of the cape a superhero might save innocents in were he not tied up so indefinitely. “What?” Reasoning, once more, for he isn’t able to fathom why his friend might say such a thing. “Yukhei-ah, I told you…we can’t—”

“Yes, we can,” he insists, and the force of his words shoves a muzzle into the additional excuses Taeyong might attempt to make. “Come on.”

It’s not that he enjoys backtalk, or the satisfaction of correcting his seniors. But if he’s learned one thing from idol training and every painstaking effort made to get here today, it’s that no one succeeds in anything by giving up.

The numbers show a bare eight minutes to go. If they hurry, shoving arms through jacket sleeves and haphazardly tugging socks onto their feet, they’ll make it with a good couple minutes to spare. 

It’s exactly what they do, no outer communication needed to edge near the abyss, sand beneath their feet no longer a joyful comfort, but a precarious warning.

With the knowledge of everyone peacefully resting for tomorrow’s promotions, it feels as if betrayal seeps in beneath their shoes, rainwater catching itself beneath the awning and pooling on smooth concrete. Another stinging intake of air brings Yukhei to a coughing fit, and he stifles the noise while the same familiar touch of hours previous circles his back. “I guess you want us there by midnight, yeah?” he says, never pausing for his reply as the usual assumption appears to be that leaders possess telepathy.

They’re taking the path sheltered by an awning of dripping rivers, water flecking into cobalt hair as progress takes the form of sudden belief in his idea. Taking the path to a room Taeyong has avoided conversing about or entering since lunch. Because he blames himself for what they wish to reverse, and as they shove open the door, unease rears its malformed head above the hope strung into their quest.

It’s less time than he thought would be provided, but it will serve for tonight.

Soles track rainfall into the carpet, immediately discarded as they slot fingers like children’s puzzle pieces. The bathroom is unlit, but the hand dealing all cards now takes charge, administering a single flick to illuminate the mirror, almost blinding both himself and Yukhei in the process. A murmured apology is answered only by the squeeze of his hand, though comfort is a far cry from any emotion now.

Before he can gather any courage, the lights flicker, then dim, and brighten again. He’s almost disappointed, glancing over to be sure nothing has changed as it may have for Mark.

Then, without a second warning, both are plunged into total darkness.

“Holy shit,” someone whispers. Someone that is _definitely not Yukhei._ Someone whose hand is not grounding him, and who surely can’t be here because the explanation would be ridiculous even if it were able to be picked into bite-size pieces. “Taeyong?”

Fearful of the illusion, and of the nothingness blinding him, dinner feels prepared to rise again in retaliation. “Mark…” Unable to view a single inch of his body, he still realizes the trembling has worsened since they entered. Is this still his room? It’s impossible, the night was illuminated before, Yukhei was _right beside him,_ how can this be _real?_

“Yeah, it’s me. It’s me, hyung, I swear, I—how did you _get_ here?”

Every atom of his body is crying, screeching at inhuman decibels for him to collapse, to faint, to avoid this at all costs. But he doesn’t. The awful sensation won’t desist, no matter how sick he’s beginning to feel.

“Can you see me, Mark?”

“I can’t see you. It’s okay, though, we can—we got this, you know? I-I mean, I can still hear you, man, it’s okay. Everything’s okay…”

He feels a hand— _Mark’s hand_ —all dry skin and cold knuckles, brush against his. 

It’s surreal, and it’s horrible, and he tries to grab hold before the lights return and he’s too lost for saving, tears streaming down his face as they burn wildly with an unrestrained fire he can’t help but claw into as he feels it all fading anyway.

The bulbs twinkle back to life, showing Taeyong a sobbing wreck on his knees, hiccuping between cries of despair as he claws weakly at the tile for a failure too immeasurable to conceive.

“ _Mark,_ ” he rasps, the emptiness consuming Yukhei now infecting his voracious gleam. He’s a child again, but the wretched pull toward self-hatred is of loss instead of regimented chance, and it hurts more than he ever imagined. “No, no _no,_ he’s here, Yukhei, he’s _here,_ I _promise,_ he was _right fucking here…_ ” There’s protest, that and struggle as those palms smooth down both shoulders, taming nothing but his nonexistent pride. And he dry heaves between breaths, though no nutrients climb up his throat to be expelled. Taeyong lets himself be held, more a breakable child’s plaything than a resilient human being; he knows that spiderweb fractures take only moments before the pressure turns porcelain to splinters. “ _Right there,_ I-I _felt_ him…I _swear_.”

Fingers grope at emptiness, peeling back and clamping down again, over and over until he feels truly ill and his stomach is attempting to revolt against the little food he persisted in downing hours before. _I couldn’t save Mark._ He’s powerless, unworthy of his leadership, all because he denied a moment of watchfulness and brought the entire sky down with him. And it _burns,_ like tomorrow will never arrive, the sun will succumb to an infinite sea, and he’ll be half the man they once respected more than words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah idk why i do this


	4. part iv: dismantle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we’re pretty much at 10k now and i’m excited so!! here’s a new chapter!!! 😍🥳

“It’s my fault…” Taeyong chokes on the brutal confession. Yet another blow to worsen the wound. “I was so _close,_ I should have—I didn’t hold on long enough, I didn’t _hold on_ …”

“It’s not your fault.”

_It will always be my fault._ He can’t force the pain any longer; it just comes, scalding and heavy as it pours across his shoulders, wax cooling over his skin as it melts away the tissue paper across the gaping hole in his chest. Raw. Bruised. Ripping deep into his core.

In the vague, uncharted distance, they hear a door slam open. Someone’s frantic, almost desperate in the same demeanor he is, and it’s only when Taemin skids into the freezing room with slippers and soaking hair that he truly feels sour regret puddling into his palms. “I heard screaming…” he attempts, faltering at the sight before him. Every edible flower of a constant thought wilts on his tongue. And the worst thing is how each defense visibly sets itself aflame—practically convenient for all it’s worth—for a verbal read of his emotion and the exposure of his struggle.

“It’s fine, hyung.” Yukhei is firm, continuously indignant due to his treatment yesterday morning. Only they know what’s true and what isn’t; the others have yet to be convinced of what they lost in a single night’s time. “You can go back to bed.”

No one speaks for a moment. Taeyong can’t even breathe, air thickening around him, and it seems impossible to ask for fewer ounces of pity that haven’t already been spilled. “He—he’s right. Everything’s fine.” A quirked brow follows his statement. He bares a spidery smile, more breakable than his wrists, pretending it solves the itching feeling that being here isn’t _right._ “Promise.”

“You’re lying to me.” _Of course we are,_ Yukhei thinks, grip tightening around his leader as Taemin approaches warily. _Which aspect told you the lie?_ It takes every ounce of restraint he has to allow them to become three, bare feet tucked beneath flannel-covered thighs as he takes a deep breath. One hand reaches for Taeyong’s, still hesitant to touch, as if either could burst into flames if he so much as risks this. He wants so badly to tear apart, separate the loss from ignorance, keep the graze of tender fingers off his leg. All because his friend’s screams—raw in his heart, fresh in his head—won’t stop pounding away in his cranium. Both temples are throbbing, but he can’t imagine how Taeyong feels. His sympathy is limited now; that common smile has erased itself with critical judgement.

Dark hair, almost raven in color if he dared compare something so naturally gorgeous, swishes when eyes drained of fierceness meet his own. “What happened?” comes the anticipated mist of unanswered questions. All he remembers is a half-minute, dark enveloping him, and his hand sliding from an icy hold before waking to something he’s bound to remember for eternity. Taemin thinks too easily of simple, explainable matters. His mind will practically implode now, not only with the missing pieces but guided along Taeyong’s story when the shock becomes threadbare enough to abandon.

There’s a pause, swollen with smoky poison. Why should he answer?

“Who is Mark?”

It tips him almost over the edge, worn enough to cling by one hand, but determined to survive through every trial. This is his first gate to pass. However many created by the heavens, he isn’t sure, forgetting if it’s important while cradling one fragile being in his arms and staring down the second.

He’s lost someone, too. It’s cruel to deny him what only he would understand.

“You think I’m crazy,” he finally says, and a trembling pair of fingers hooks onto the warm hand extended over Yukhei’s legs. They’re sitting on the bathroom floor, all three terrified for what’s about to be unleashed inside this loose-knit, makeshift circle, and none of them know in what way to prepare for this unveiling.

“Maybe you are.” A tingling spark pulls at his vertebrae. Taemin shifts closer, fearing the worst yet still supporting both his juniors in the only way he can. “But it’s not my job to think that.” He makes sure the weakness is only visible through denying it—that he’s strong, tough outer skin a conch shell of pretty engravings. The warmth should compensate for how powerless he feels. 

It only crushes him further, breathing for a revelation his wildest terrors couldn’t possibly have the wickedness to prepare him for.

“Mark wa— _is._ He _is_ the youngest member of SuperM.” Another silence, Taeyong stealing the advantage to push closer into muscular arms and drag their outlier with him. Moving to gauge a bit of balance, Yukhei’s feet nearly plant into the grooves between each tile. And he starts again.

“His name is Mark Lee. He’s part of NCT, and our band. SuperM, he—he’s in SuperM.” If he stammers…if he lets his breath stutter, it means something. “And it’s been exactly a day since he disappeared.”

Numb is an understatement to how unsettling this all feels. Does that serve a purpose if he summons the right words?

Taemin has grown statuesque, yet his beautiful irises contain the secrets unsoiled by time. Panic and rapid ailment…it’s not what he comprehends as what has been stolen. But even if he thinks them insane, the trick is to lie him over a fishhook and wait for better bait. A cautious animal treading into hunter’s land, he dares to lay a palm on the younger’s wrist, just stapling them together in case the storm gusts in with ruthless abandon. Each paper has its place in the narrative, and without Mark, so many plot holes are left gaping, molding, crying out with no pause to be filled again.

“Then what happened here?”

It’s not the query he can’t place, but a hollow absence that rubs at his cheeks like sandpaper and burns them like the sun. There’s no grandeur in telling him, and they’ve been staving it off so long now, it’s bound to spill over eventually. But the same instant as Yukhei opens his mouth, Taeyong’s voice drowns out his own.

“The lights went out last night. For two fucking seconds, and he was just _gone._ ” The metal of these wires digs through his flesh, threatening to slice them all in half if they decide to bargain now. “It’s my fault he’s gone…you—you don’t even remember him, but I swear, he’s real, you _have to believe us._ ”

“Look at me, Taeyongie.” Simple words, for a man who can’t connect the strings from bright red pins stuck in the wall. He’s still trying, though, and that’s beginning to melt his earlier reluctance to let him in. “I believe you,” Taemin assures, maneuvering so he can thread their hands together, stroking his opposite thumb over the curve of Yukhei’s shoulder. “All three of us can do this tomorrow. Or—tonight?” A glance toward the youngest doesn’t solve much, defeated shrug offering as much help as the impossibly-worsening rain. “Whichever one it is, we’ll do it together. Yeah?”

Moving his lips, the sound doesn’t emerge until a second, forced attempt. “Okay,” is all Taeyong says, drained and dripping sweat, saline carving paths into both cheeks. More wordless anticipation swarms about them, as if wishing someone to speak, to exhale, give even a single sign that it's alright. It isn’t, but to be proven wrong by a lie might help. Just a little.

That night, a dark room houses three who shiver beneath heaped blankets, legs tangled without stalling for permission, violent dreams muted by the proximity of a safe haven. This is no place for the ignorant. Now, here, Taemin lies awake, mismatched configurations of the puzzle scattered inside his head, still working how to fit them as one whole image as he drifts off to sleep. Six hours of sleep won’t return the boy they say everyone can’t recall, but he might understand better at sunrise.

He unwinds the spring-tight extremities of his body, relaxing in part against a quilt that smells of faded autumn, bleeding hearts. Forgotten, like _Mark Lee._ He prays to God this nightmare will end, and he starts to reality with memories of seven instead of only six.

They must be telling the truth. Not for any certain reason, he promises in the blue-gray light of an early November morning. But because he doesn’t know what else to believe.

~

It’s expected, the nightmares. But he doesn’t start awake like usual, face pale and limbs ensnared in the web of his bedsheets. He can’t feel his legs, fingertips buzzing with a static he doesn’t trust one bit, but the tears are plentiful and never ending as they slip from his lashes, staining the pillow he’s offered to share with the only people here who understand, if only just a bit. A film of dampness clings to him; he’s unsure whether or not moving would disturb the other two.

“Is it six yet?”

“Mm…don’t think so. Yukhei’d be up by then.”

Remains of the nest stuffed around him, he sees the emptiness before really feeling it. The other two are wrapped in blankets of their own, conspiring before the sun rises again. He can’t help the jealousy spiking through each nerve, though he knows what’s different about this image and he knows why they aren’t the same as before. Fixing it—that takes courage. Something he wouldn’t have been able to summon so plentifully if Taeyong hadn’t known all this, too.

Even now, there’s less sound to drown his worry in, weather having slowed from torrential currents to a typical downpour, hopefully enough to mask the defeat in its shadows cast all about his room. Words seem impossible when it all floods back in, chasing a spark, fragments of a fallen star that keep leaping, airborne, away from their grasp. He’s not so far, and still a barrier foreign to all of them is locking Mark in, the only door to his safety and path home shut tight, barricaded thanks to one insipid mistake. If they try again, try tonight, they can bring him home. If they manage to find their way back from wherever this unknown entity stole him into. He’s hidden far enough that even tree hollows and rabbit holes are out of the question.

Maybe he’s being dramatic, but he’s afraid of losing Mark forever. Their memories will be dust in the cusp of a starving, sickly heartbeat; the end will spite them all if no one drags him back to this life.

“I’m up,” he finally says, interjecting with a raspy voice low enough to be recognized, but unintelligible unless heard without any other to back it. Taemin’s knee-jerk reaction, whipping ninety degrees to face him with a puzzling expression, doesn’t help the way a drain is whirling away any clear water gathered in his lungs. “I’m already up…”

Taeyong, without prompting, is up to drape a fleece blanket around his shoulders. He feels the tremor run through him without lifting a hand, and it’s somehow worse this way, how they’ve gone silent as if he’s the one who can’t handle knowing what’s gone even more wrong since last night. Is it still night? The sun hasn’t risen, but the canvas of clouds is a shade of cobwebs stained with dust. There’s already too much to be said about all that’s happened since yesterday morning, he knows. So he doesn’t talk, and lets the other voices sort out a plan.

“Yukhei-ah.” Again, calling him to act. His plan _failed_ last night; they could have lost Taeyong just beside Mark. How are they so indifferent, so loving without a mask of uncertainty so much as shading their features, if not hiding them entirely? “Come here.”

They act this out in movie scenes, clipping between camera angles in three sets of eyes, over shoulders, behind sheets, and somehow he can’t get enough of it. Sinking to the carpet, leader by his side, Taemin grasps ahold of the longest fingers he’s ever seen up close, curving palms and knuckles around them in a too-small cage that appears to him fitting for their situation. “I still don’t know what happened last night,” he begins, for each of them waited hours to unveil that single truth about his involvement. Yet still, he believed everything they say—it’s terrifying, to say the least, but they trust him with hardly any pushback, and it acts as enough to bind them all further. 

“I don’t think any of us do.” It presses like a children’s hand stamp into their chests. Wherever Mark went—wherever he’s vanished to—they have no clue how to avoid being stolen there, or any way to find that same darkness their friend is trapped within. “But we have to keep trying. If we give up, we’ll never get him back…”

“Then we won’t give up.”

“Yong-ah,” Taemin begins once more, pulling him further into the haphazard circle so that every blanket grazes hidden knees and they can join hands as if summoning a physical body of courage between folded legs and shaky, entwined fingers. “You have to pace yourself. After last night, you need more rest than both of us.” He looks to Yukhei, as if prompting him to speak, fill the void between his words and convince their tireless friend that he should grasp onto the offer while it exists in their presence. No answer; it’s selfish, but he still can’t believe their senior hasn’t called them insane just yet. Even so…when Taeyong’s eyes, framed by those feathery lashes, melt into his, he relents with a nod both appear satisfied by. It’s uncomfortable, the silence after resonating words. Perhaps internalizing his thoughts only makes it worse on his end, and not to them, though everyone’s face speaks of jagged crevices they’re slipping further into as time ticks on.

When six o’clock eventually hits, they rise wordlessly, shedding capes of protection and trading them for borrowed sweaters from the closet, lit by a single flashlight because he knows the danger by now. 

The darkness is deadly if kept for too long. Poison if they manage to stay.

Bodies, natural and yet so futilely wrong, filter in and out, coffee grounds soaked in boiling water to satisfy one man’s needs. Ten leaves a lingering kiss on Taeyong's porcelain face, and it seems to be the only action he responds to all morning, starting only to offer his lips up to Ten’s before settling into a mannequin again. Jongin speaks briefly to his oldest friend, sharing a couple bites of his omelette without a second thought. It’s so natural to them, the closeness of it all. He envies the people around the kitchen island, he realizes, even when Baekhyun hugs him from behind, ruffles his hair because _there’s no harm in it, right?_

And he agrees. That’s the worst part of upright, mobile paper cutouts because no matter how human they appear to be, their touch feels shallow and smoky, a thunderstorm brewing for eternity and never quite sending lightning or water their way.

~

A bit later, lingering by the room Mark shared— _shares_ —with his other closest group member, he overhears the exchange between its only resident and the fragile being he’s grown just a touch too desperate to protect. 

“You’re sure? I mean, you have the whole afternoon off, you really don’t have to—”

“I wanna spend time with you,” Taeyong insists, and Yukhei can swear the break of his voice sounds the same as those less-than-rare hours in their solitude, when he’s walked in on them clinging to one another with searching, innocent fingers carding through dye-bleached hair. “We… _I_ haven’t done that enough. Not since we moved back in for the comeback.”

Ten sighs, and it’s that same one he hears when Kun doesn’t agree with his opinions or when he can’t figure out a certain step in their choreography. Dissection, people say, is what he does, but it’s downplayed to make his role fit the one he was assigned. It doesn’t help the way his friend begins again, lack of sleep audible through each word.

“That’s not your fault and you know it. You’re always—no. No, I’m sorry…it came out wrong. I didn’t mean it that way—”

“I know. It’s okay.”

Yukhei can almost see how the hum of his pulse flares again, cracks webbing deeper, further across the pale, sparkling surface he’s built for protection. Masks and shells and glossy stones can only conceal him for so long. It’s a matter of time before one of them pries open the chasm between slivers of marble, heart pouring like a fountain from the broken dam.

“I don’t believe you.”

He doesn’t cement his face to a permanent smile this time. The sky clouds over, darker, bringing winds fashioned and blown out from the Arctic Sea; his thin sweater provides no molten armor against the telling gale. Without hearing the excuses made to bruise open wounds, his mind’s eye reveals a ravenous tiger, starving, battered, _desperate_ in its cage. 

It takes a moment for Ten’s voice to rise, but by then, he’s already torn from the wild animals about to be freed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do you think they’re gonna do now that taemin knows? do you think they can find another way to to mark???


	5. part v: cascade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS BEEN OVER A MONTH BUT HERE’S CONTENT FOR THE FEW OF YOU THAT ARE ENJOYING THIS 💞💞💞 I LOVE Y’ALL

“Yukhei-ah? Hey, we’ve got a photoshoot in an hour! Are you in there? Yukhei…?”

There’s nothing cathartic about his tension, the way he can’t move or breathe without worrying if a variable will slip out of place or wondering if his sanity really has been affected by their back-to-back schedules. No one would be shocked to find him like this after yesterday, but even so, the liar’s guilt is cloaking over him, growing like mold or moss by the moment. Jongin’s voice outside the door doesn’t provide enough distraction until he counts the final push up of forty. 

_ Would he leave if I asked? What if I told him to? _

Ten-thirty, and he hasn’t seen anyone since the disjointed breakfast routine. He’s not disappointed, but it would help if the loneliness didn’t make him feel so isolated—enough to the point where he’s already locked his door, notifications multiplying on his lock screen until a Kakao text from Taeyong worms its way between Twitter posts and Instagram updates.

**dad of 22 kids**

_ we should talk before going anywhere _

_ the three of us _

_ i have taemin with me, if you want to see him _

Push past Jongin, weave back to Taeyong. It seems like a foolproof plan, but the moment he wipes pearls of sweat from his brow, door unlocked to welcome one of these flammable paper figures inside…he doesn’t know  _ what _ to do. The way a crease furrows between plucked eyebrows, perfect even up close, sends a wave of seawater over his skin. “Is everything okay?” he asks now, reaching up to itch the back of his neck, taller of the two half-expecting the crinkling of tissue paper to echo through the air.

Once warmed by sunlight, those same irises are blank, a bare hint of emotion remaining as he stares at Yukhei. How the other two have been withstanding it, he can’t begin to explain.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Thanks for asking, hyung.” He pushes past Jongin, cringing as his face weans from sight. It’s as if those same eyes swap for beryl as soon as his back is turned, but he doesn’t look back, fully aware he’s too fearful of what he’ll find.

**dad of 22 kids**

_ are you coming? _

Ignoring the message, his footfall is drowned by the wind whipping his jacket behind him, a tail fluttering as he struggles to keep grit from floating into his face. Even as his hand stops a hair away from knocking, the buzz from his pocket makes one eye twitch and the sound is muffled like his steps against the world-ending gale building higher by the moment. 

“Hello? It’s me…”

“ _ Yukhei! _ ”

The whisper-shout of surprise confuses him, right before he realizes it’s emerged from the sliver of open door, the voice none other than Taeyong’s, and by then he’s being dragged inside as Taemin flicks the lock in place like an apocalypse is coming. What exactly have they been conspiring over while he was alone?

“Is anyone outside? I saw Jongin walk towards y— _ hey. _ Is he gone or not?” Taemin hisses, peering between the blinds again for what must be the hundredth time. Two slats are left at awkward angles, a ripple traveling down each piece of plastic the only evidence he was ever there. “Yukhei-ah. Did you say anything to him?”

“I—no? No, I didn’t tell him about this…” There’s a pause, his brain working to catch up as it treads at least three kilometers behind theirs. “Am I not supposed to? What the hell is—”

“There’s something wrong with them.  _ All _ of them, even Ten-ie,” Taeyong says, dragging him to the bed and it feels like whatever vice clamped around his head has traveled to his wrist, flinging him down without any context as both dive into the story at once.

“Nobody knows who Mark is, obviously. Not even me, I guess? But—”

“He gave me this  _ horrible _ look. It looked like all the warmth just sucked out of his eyes, I couldn’t stay around him—”

“—and not even Jongin believes me. I tried talking to Baekhyun and he just gave me the same answer, almost word for word. It didn’t even sound like him, now that I think of it—”

Paranoia sets in as a thin fog veiled by their clear panic, wafting into their heads and clogging arteries that should lead to rational thought. Yukhei doesn’t know what’s happening anymore, words barreling from dry lips a cyclone, him at the center with an enemy no one knows the face of. And they keep talking, tripping over each other until he can’t take it anymore, doesn’t understand and doesn’t care when he slams both hands on the mattress.

“Stop, stop— _ hyungs _ . I don’t understand anything  _ either _ of you are saying…”

They share a look, as if he’s crazy, like they both don’t know his first language obviously isn’t Korean. And per usual, Taeyong starts first.

“What we’re trying to say is, we can’t talk about Mark to them. I have a bad feeling about it,” he tells him, Taemin nodding along with concerned eyes and tense shoulders. “Something happened when Mark disappeared. More than that, I mean, aside from him being missing and us not knowing where he’s gone, even if that puts us in danger because—”

Yukhei has to reach for one of the shaky hands, gesturing wildly apart from the body attached to them like the motions alone are magic, can summon courage or even their friend if he tries hard enough or twists a joint the wrong way. There’s a spell of uneven breathing before he regains composure. Or fakes it. Either one is enough.

He can’t stop thinking of the wounded animal his leader has become in the midst of hardship like this. For years now, he’s known a steady captain of the units who, yes, needed assurance and a touch of praise, but it was rare he asked for such ministrations. Only Ten knows all those intricacies, and now that even his love’s been stolen… Thinking harder as he rubs circles into the damp creases of Taeyong’s palm, it’s clear how far he’s got to fall until a mountaintop catches him with outstretched, snow-covered arms.

“Something  _ happened, _ and now we can’t talk about Mark,” is the only thing he says, still focused on anchoring his thoughts while Taemin rubs his back and he lets the same hand be massaged into placidity. “You know there’s something wrong, and Taemin-hyung knows, but they— _ no one  _ listens to me. I tried calling our manager earlier,” he adds, glassy eyes locking on Yukhei’s. “He told me to get some sleep. Just  _ sleep! _ That’s it! Nothing—he didn’t even ask what I was  _ talking _ about.”

The remaining two, steadier than Taeyong, share a look that lasts only a moment, slowly becoming more aware of how complex their situation is. Backed into a corner at the edge of a cliff, it’s difficult to imagine any more ideas than those from last night. Early morning? Both count at this point; time matters too much to hesitate.

Yukhei suddenly realizes that both of them are dressed properly for going out, while he’s still in a loose tank top and sweats. That’s yet another order of business he’ll have to take care of.

“I should get ready,” he mumbles, mostly to himself before pushing off the bed. The wind rattles against glass panes; a threat, growing into doors forced open by an angry mob of faceless people. They all know how it feels.

For some reason, he’s now glad about that duffel he left in Taeyong’s room a week or so ago. A small victory, he thinks, returning to his luggage to uncover proper clothes. They’re conversing again, quietly, and he can’t help the sticky, onyx jealousy that webs over his concern. Even turning up the collar of his jacket, nothing quite pricks at his nerves like being left out of something important.

Because he wants this to matter. Because Mark  _ does _ matter, especially to him, despite how much closer he is to the others.

It’s always quiet now when they depart—out of hiding, into the world—but this time it feels heavy. A burden each of them carries without shame but not without fear. He sits beside Baekhyun this time as they file into the van. Even with a hand on his knee from someone warmer, someone  _ hurt _ …none of it seems right.

None of it is real.

~

“One more time! Give us a cool pose, everyone!”

The camera flashes blindingly once more, and he can swear the tears on his lashes were planned as they usher each member but Baekhyun off the tiny set. For a second, they’re all entranced as they watch him pose again. So unreserved, so knowledgeable of what to do—he could resemble freedom if he had any. 

Yukhei is reminded he has places to go when Taeyong pulls his sleeve in another direction, discreet but sharply executed to guide him along. Taemin is already waiting at the door to a dressing room, so the moment they rush inside, the  _ thwick _ of a lock is easy to pick out among muted sound. “Can they hear us?” he whispers, to make absolute sure in case the answer is—

“No.” Black bangs shielding the upper half of his face, it’s difficult to read the second figure beside him in comparison to the puppy braced for more punishment. “All the dressing rooms are soundproof. I checked before they got me into makeup.” At this, it’s another hand to his wrist, like Taeyong’s but even softer. These fingers aren’t as bony, have been reminded what it’s like to be strong in the face of enormous loss. He wonders why doubting Taemin was ever an option.

Someone passes by the door, all of them freezing in place. The sound fades quickly. Taeyong looks as if he might be sick for the second time in two days; Taemin’s arms shield the younger members from any oncoming harm.

“They’re looking for me, aren’t they?” he says miserably, soothing the panic back for his usual doe-eyed look. Innocent, yet not quite—he knows so many things these people don’t, has actively performed in some of them, too. He’s the best front they have, and they shouldn’t waste a good opportunity while they have it.

Two out of sight, one unprepared to leave them behind, the final element leaves the room. Somehow, it’s easier to breathe, knowing the time they have is decent enough.

“I thought about this last night,” Taemin is saying to Yukhei, before either can process the lock snapping back again, “and I know it sounds insane, but you have to hear me out.” He waits, and in between there’s the expected nod. He continues. “What if they’re just keeping Mark from  _ us? _ Like—okay, it’s a bad example, but imagine they just kept him in some dorm away from ours? Maybe he’s back with NCT Dream, or even NCT 127–”

“Hyung, we don’t have a lot of time,” he has to remind the elder, peering into the mirror behind Taemin to see his own freakishly-white hair. It’s terrifying, how well it matches both emotion and the situation. “What are we doing?”

Without hesitation, the hold on his wrist returns, warm and inviting yet so dangerous in its risk. 

“We’re taking every  _ damn _ key we can find in this place. And we’re finding Mark if it’s the last thing we do.”

He doesn’t seem to care at this point, and to be honest, Yukhei has no intention of telling him to stop. If this is it—if they get reprimanded or punished by unimaginable threats—at least he can say they tried. 

The lock snaps again, door silent on its hinges as Taemin leans forward to check the hall. Every breath weighs like an anchor atop each shoulder, tendons like telephone wires straining across too long a distance for them to cover. Echoing in his head, Taeyong’s words strike arrowheads into the ground he treads. It’s a maze in here and it’s one he never bothered to unravel without anybody else. Following his senior is the only option now, after closing access to the safe haven, stepping on thin stones to round a corner he’s never come near in his life. His heart pounds at least ten beats a millisecond. It’s been too quiet, too  _ easy  _ for them to get here. Is someone watching? Do they know what’s going on?

“I’m too young to die here…” Yukhei hears, just before watching his friend pull one sleeve over his palm, twisting the knob like it’s rigged to explode once they catch a glimpse of what’s inside. “Is anyone coming?” he hisses, barely cracking the door open a single centimeter. His posture tells of someone who’s done this many times, and been caught almost every one.

The answer spills out immediately, before he really decides what to say: “It’s clear.” Turning to cover Taemin if the need arises, Yukhei nods, reassuring himself that nothing bad will happen. No one is walking down the halls, or emerging from doors they can’t see at this angle. If he believed in God, maybe he’d be praying harder than he is now.

Sans the warning, he’s practically yanked inside without a word. It’s so abrupt that he finds his mouth covered already, back against the door as if to hold a barricade closed. The figure is daring, halfway existing. Neither are visible among pitch black surroundings. He’s breathing in dust—this can’t be the place, not when it smells of disuse and faded air freshener. Or maybe that’s the perfume Taemin used hours ago. Everything is expensive these days, despite who it belongs to.

“ _ Shh. _ ”

Glossy nails brush beneath his nose, moving to the light switch just near his bicep. Blinded once by the dark, and now by the harsh bulbs spotlighting both intruders in a completely still place, he’s already tempted to defy the order. Just as a test. Here, the rules seem inapplicable, like the idea of time created to bring not just order but chaos to human minds.

Taemin’s mouth is set, plush lips thinned as he uses the same method as before to start searching every drawer beneath the desk. “Yukhei-ah,” he says stiffly, voice so hushed it’s nearly inaudible. “Try the bookshelf. They have to be here somewhere—”

He doesn’t speak; just obeys, unthinking as he pulls books only slightly from their places. Checking for trap doors, maybe, but Taemin genuinely looks as if the desk is set to bite his hands off. That wouldn’t be such a bad price. At least it would make his dream theory obvious, make this feel less  _ real. _ For a minute or two, there’s only forced exhales, never steady as their fingers brush and grope for things beyond their sight.

For a second, coming to the bottom of his shelf, Yukhei thinks it’s a lost cause. That when they’re caught by staff (or worse: the director himself), suspension or even unlimited hiatus will lie in wait. It’s before his palm meets cool metal, suspiciously small and accompanied by the same shape on a ring of—

“Hyung,” he mumbles, pulling back from the final row of knickknacks and mismatched volumes, a bunch of keys clasped in his hand. They imitate snow against clammy skin. “I found them.” If he didn’t have a conscience, or was a disobedient trainee with little to his name and even less to lose—this would be exhilarating. Today, he’s got more depending on this spontaneity than he did as a newly-debuted member. Hopefully it’s only him.

“You’re fucking amazing,” Taemin says, still illuminated by the dancing spots of light that freckle his face and around his head. Each multicolored dot creates a halo he’s never seen. The older is about to speak again, but footsteps pass like before, their lungs seizing, fragile ice crawling over their sweat-beaded foreheads to freeze time inside the tiny space. 

“Lucas! We need you in Makeup, your shoot is next!” someone calls. Unbothered in recognizing the name, one of them—it’s difficult to tell, both hands scramble for the switch at once—slaps off the lights again like the blanket of false midnight skies will craft a shield from their own disobedience. “Lucas?”

“She’s already checked the dressing rooms, oh my god, holy  _ shit, _ we’re gonna get caught…” From beneath the desk is where the voice emerges, his eyes adjusting to the tar-like cloak smothering them under its weight. One foot is asleep now as he fights to squeeze further into the corner, shoulder against the door hinges, hands to his chest as he makes himself as compact as humanly possible for someone his size. He can’t see it, but Taemin is crossing himself—what he can hear is the mumbled prayer being made as that same faceless person nears the office. It’s hide and seek with a horrible outcome now. She’s approached the hallway; he can feel her indifference spreading through the floor.

There’s no time left. He only has one option, and at this rate, it won’t be a burden on his conscience any more than the rest of this is.

Yukhei reaches up, sweaty fingers pushing the lock into place, and thinks that if Taemin believes in God, he might as well pretend for his own sake.

Key teeth leaving indents in flesh, he holds his breath, like a sinew stretched too thin on its bow. Being a child again brings with it the anxiety of being found, and with that an unnecessary guilt he has no need of feeling. It’s for a good reason. He’s doing this for someone else. It’s not selfish. He  _ knows _ it’s not wrong.

She turns the handle, just inches away from where Yukhei is curled into the corner. Twists it once, then tries again. The knob rattles from a set of rapid jerking one way and another. And just when he thinks she’ll break the damn door to get in, violence more prevalent than what Taemin saw in the eyes of one member and likely all the rest—it stops.

When she walks away, a shared, shuddering breath ripples into the dust still floating in the claustrophobic room. Either luck or sheer willpower has rescued them, but he won’t credit either until Taemin emerges from his hiding place.

He doesn’t exactly move, but the words carry a similar weight. 

“How are we gonna get out of here?”

The reply, muffled halfway into his forearms, doesn’t promise much, either.

“We’re  _ dead,  _ aren’t we?”

“It’s likely…” And they both wait, like the other person is formulating a plan while their minds go blank. Backing into a corner wasn’t a cowardly move, but it now seems so obviously stupid… Without some sort of miracle, there will be nothing outside for them until everyone leaves, which should take hours of not only searching for them but making calls to figure out what’s happened.

A thud resounds in the cramped room, and Taemin’s noise of surprise has Yukhei grinding teeth against each other, jawbone a loaded spring as he waits for the inevitable, reassuring voice. 

“ _ I found something! _ ”

Not what he expected, but it’s better than being hopeless. He scrambles across the floor on hands and knees, probably dusting up his new outfit to make his way over. A hand drags him forward, seemingly into a wall as he rounds the desk. Wasn’t there some sort of monitor there before? Right where the hand is pulling him?

With a single inhale, he fills his lungs with whatever courage can be drawn from his nerves—and plunges, eyes closed, into the nothingness.

Even without sound, it’s like processing an ear-splitting scream through a broken mic. There’s a murmur beneath it, too far to be connected by the fingers clutching his; slippery, yet it’s anything but warm. He shouts through water for his senior, for him to stop playing games as a second hand finds purchase on his elbow. Yukhei knows he’ll drown if he doesn’t get out of here. He doesn’t know how, but understanding that alone is what sends him to panicking, shouting all over again,  _ pleading _ for Taemin to help him in a language the other won’t even understand. Someone’s at his ankles now, some _ thing _ , trying to fold him in its vile embrace.

_ I don’t want to die here, I don’t want to die, please,  _ please,  _ help me, I don’t want to be alone, I  _ can’t _ die alone— _

There’s a labored grunt, fading into a scream of enormous effort. His shoulder almost pops from its socket, all the force and pressure great enough to force tears from both sides for what feels like eternity, the final heave so harsh it wrenches a guttural cry from the back of his throat. 

This same hold sends light through watery, closed eyelids. Fluorescent, ugly and stinging. He won’t take for granted a single place that isn’t  _ nothingness _ again. 

Yukhei shudders, cheek pressed to an itchy carpet smelling of spilled coffee and new leather shoes. The makeup painted over twisted features is nearly heavier than his limbs, like sandstone compared to the bone and muscle he should be. A hand ghosts over his thigh, and if he wasn’t so exhausted, there might have been sickly evidence of them both splattered all over the floor. But they don’t need a replay of yesterday. And he can’t put them in danger of being found. Not when they’re so close to uncovering an entirely new  _ something _ that could cost Mark’s life— _ everyone’s _ life—if they don’t dig further into this opening in the ground, even though it feels more and more like a grave each moment that ticks by.

“Where did you go…?”

_ I don’t know. _ “I-It was dark.”  _ It hurt so much. It was trying to take me.  _ “Someone was—I felt them grabbing at me, I…” Even choking down his composure, Yukhei can’t finish his sentence, all of it too fresh and clear in memory to shove it far away. And the thing is—he knows Taemin can feel it, too. In the way his breath hitches, shoulder twitching when he tries to roll it back. 

This is a test. He’s failing so badly that it’s laughable.

Finally pushing himself up, to his knees and then, agonizingly, to his feet, it dawns on him how bad this whole situation is about to get. What kind of explanation would it be to say they found an ‘otherworldly opening’ in the office that magically transported them back into the SM building? All while Taeyong was doing his photoshoot, with staff looking for him Taemin? Oh, and that both of them were in on this, too?

By the time they return, an excuse won’t be the only thing wanted of them.

“We should get out of here.  _ Fast. _ Can you—”

Even so…it can’t really get worse. After all, the keys are still in Taemin’s pocket, clinking beautifully as they edge to the center of the office—one much larger than the previous scenery was providing. And he hasn’t lost his wits just yet, even if some courage was taken to compensate.

“I’m okay,” Yukhei promises, nodding stiffly like he’s assuring himself rather than his senior. “You’re right; we have to find a way out of here.”

“Is there one?” Taemin asks now, lips forming a downturned crescent between his cheeks. One hand gestures at the door, the other withdrawing the ring of keys from his jacket. “If we wait here too long, they’ll find us. If we go through  _ whatever  _ that hole in the wall was—” he points toward a gap between the shelves— “they’ll find us.” Raising both eyebrows as if to say  _ What do you expect us to do? _ doesn’t help much, even though he’s right. And without having to speak, both know the greater danger lies in what they  _ can’t _ predict rather than what they can.

For a minute, standing there just inflates the elephant in the room. Solving this should take more time and brainpower than they can muster. But as he stares, dazed by the despair of their situation, out the window, it comes to him. 

The idea hits him like the shocking brightness of the office:

“What if we just leave?”


End file.
